Best Romance Books of 2021

oh hello today we are wrapping up my romance reading for the year of 2021 and we are talking about my top 10 with astrix favorites reads of the year in the romance genre these are not just books that came out in 2021 but this is my top 10 list of romances that i read in 2021 and i will say that this year has not been as strong for me in romance reading as the last couple of years like the last couple of years i you know this was a true struggle to figure out what was going to get cut and what was going to make the list in this particular genre this year was more just like okay i had one 4.5 star i had one five star everything else i read was a four for me that's like an a minus so i did read a lot of what i would think of as a minus romances but in terms of like a a plus not as much but i still feel really good about the list that we are going to talk about today i feel like we have decent coverage across romance sub-genres not as much as i would like which kind of makes sense considering how much sci-fi romance i read this year but anyway let's get into it starting at the bottom and working our way to number one okay tied for tenth place because i couldn't quite decide which of these i liked better is i married a lizard man and i married a birdman by regine abell shout out to izzy from happy for now for recommending this book to me because i've actually really enjoyed reading some of regine abel's backlist this year and i love this series that she has going it is a marriage of convenience sci-fi romance series the titles i love because they're so intentionally campy as are the covers particularly i married a lizard man it's like yeah regine you definitely get the vibe of what this series is like and who it appeals to but basically all of these books are human women who are in arranged marriages for various political reasons with different alien species that bear a striking resemblance to animals that we have here on earth hence lizardman and birdman if i had to pick between the two i think i may slightly preferred birdman over lizardman but in both of them basically the human women are in arranged marriages with these different groups of species who have not yet advanced to intergalactic space travel so they actually have varying levels of technological capability but they are considered primitive just because they are not yet traveling in space like for instance and i married a birdman it sounds like they have technology beyond what we here on earth currently have so i think that's an interesting component i really appreciate the care with which regine abel paints a picture of these different cultures and really these are basically cross-cultural romances where each of the two people are really like sweet there's a certain wholesomeness to these books even though they are definitely erotic in terms of the sexy times but there's like this real sweetness to them and they're just well-meaning people trying to make these marriages of convenience work that is a trope i really enjoy or like a setup i really enjoy and i really have enjoyed all three books in the series i hope it continues and that is in my number 10 slot then number nine again we the all of my bottom three rankings are two books in a series because i didn't want to take up like full slots with series entries so i'm just putting them together number nine is fire in his veins and fire in his chaos by ruby dixon now at the time of filming the final book in the fire blood series has not yet come out but that is due out on the last day of the year or possibly maybe it'll get bumped into next year at the beginning but this is a series that i did not like at the beginning of it but i kept going because i love ruby dixon so much as you were about to hear more about i kept going and i'm very glad i did because around the third or fourth book the macro plot in this series really picks up and i really enjoy where the macro plot has ended up going i also love that in the ruby dixon verse all of these series are interconnected and we heard about the events of this book in the ice planet barbarians series but anyway basically the setup is that earth has been consumed in fire chaos and destruction from an alien species that are called the draconi that are basically like dragon shifter type aliens and they basically came through like this wormhole into the into the earth and destroyed civilization as we know it so this is sort of like a post-apocalyptic sci-fi romance series and all of our books are well there's one where it's a draconian female and a human male getting together but most of them are human females getting together which are crony males they have faded mates but coming through that wormhole has like driven all of these aliens mad so a big portion of the romance is the human women like essentially getting through to them and i'm enjoying seeing kind of like where the series is going i'm also very excited that the final book is going to be basically the bad guy and his fate had made i think that's gonna be really interesting so fire in his veins is a draconian male who actually i forget now why but basically he was able to maintain his sanity coming through the wormhole and he's been passing as human in this human settlement and he has known that one of the women who's in this human settlement is his mate for a while but he knows he can't act on it so i thought that was an interesting setup and then fire in his chaos uh goes back to fort dallas which we had been away from for a while but it's back in fort dallas and it's one of the women who is like one of the panty providers because basically they figured out that these alien draconi men can have a faded mate and it will like make them sane so they're trying to like find these human women to be their their mates and they are like putting their panties out to like entice them with the smell i love how campy and amazing that is as a setup basically our heroine was like horribly injured during the apocalypse when they first came through i believe that she is missing a limb and she's very disfigured and so that is a part of her journey and i felt like that was a really interesting angle and i just i thought that it was a particularly good entry in the series so those two together are number nine number eight is my favorite entry in the ice home series that came out this year and my favorite in the original ice planet barbarian series that came out this year i guess it was the only one and it was like the last century in the original series so that was barbarian's bride this is bridget spain i obviously love this series i'm wearing my merry no poison day christmas sweater today like i love this is like one of my all-time favorite series these are some of my all-time favorite books i really liked bridget's bane because i felt like it was really sweet to see couples having to like work to be together basically we get ice planet barbarians couple counseling in this and i really liked that they it was a miscommunication trope where it wasn't just oh you just you two just need to have one conversation everything's gonna be fine it was a miscommunication trope because we have communication issues and we're going to work on them together in therapy i just thought that was so great i really liked the payoff for bridget and atem because things had kind of been building with them for a while and i felt like this was really satisfying so i very much enjoyed this and then barbarian's bride features ice planet jewish wedding and i love that i just thought that was really sweet this also deals with communication which realize that's the theme for both of these because in nora and josh's book we see them having her like teaching him about consent and like communicating consent during sex and it's very sweet and i mean she's into some very light kinky stuff and he you know being the sweet himbo that he is like he just cannot imagine ever like holding her down or like doing anything like that and so they like they have like a safe word and they work through it it's just so sweet i thought it was pretty funny and just also like i love the underlying message i just god i love that series so much so yes those two together are number eight number seven is the soulmate equation from christina lauren whose contemporaries i can be hit or miss with but when the premise appeals to me i almost always know that i'm going to have a good time in these books when they when they have like tropes that i don't enjoy they cannot work as well for me but this was a trope i really liked because basically it is light speculative contemporary romance because the premise is that there is a dating app that is based on genetic matches and it is our heroine who is matched like the highest match that they've ever found with the owner of the company and so they are going to try to be in a relationship basically like for pr reasons they're going to pay her not to like sleep with him but just to at least give their relationship a try he is a curmudgeon she is more sunshiny she also has a kid already and i really i think what i really liked about this one i liked the dynamic between the two main characters but i also just really loved the like kind of family dynamics in this one with her her best friend her kid and her grandparents like just all of that together i felt like was really really charming lovely and just i just enjoyed that a lot and i ultimately did enjoy the kind of course of the fake dating element of this one i just thought yeah this one really worked for me originally i gave this four and a half stars and i think as the year went on i remembered less and less about it so i felt like it needed to get dinged down a little bit but this is still like an a minus kind of book really good and i really really enjoyed it another contemporary romance with great family dynamics baggage issues was a lot like adios by alexis daria i liked this even better than you had me at ola which came out last year this is the sequel in that series also these covers just side out are everything but i really enjoyed this one i think even more because i really it's like a borderline romance in the sense of there's not that much development i think for our heroine but our hero has a really interesting backstory and a really interesting past with his parents that i think was developed really effectively in this book i really felt his baggage and sort of like the weight he he is feeling of how he can never live up to his parents expectations even though he really wants to he can't stay in new york because he just can't confront how many feelings he has around all that so the hero and heroine were kind of like childhood friends about to become lovers then he just totally ghosted he is back in town romancelandia business reasons and uh there they reconnect they immediately like have that fire even more so they become lovers it's them figuring out if they can kind of like have a life together now despite kind of some of the past baggage that they have so i just really i thought the writing in this was really good i thought the character development was really good and like i said i particularly liked the family dynamics in this one also the sex scenes gave what they were supposed to give number five is say goodbye from karen rose which was the finale in her romantic suspense trilogy that has been set in sacramento it has been centered around like the suspense part has been around a cult and these books always are on the bubble of me thinking them as either more mystery or as more romance this particular entry in the series i definitely think of as more romance and i loved this romance it is childhood friends to lovers that's something i really like i feel like i'm in the minority of that i feel like a lot of people don't like friends to lovers but i personally that's like one of the only angst heavy tropes that i really get into but they are childhood friends to lovers they both have been in really traumatic relationships with other people one of them was engaged one of them was married really traumatic endings to those relationships they've kind of come back into each other's lives and she realizes that in order for them to still have any kind of relationship they're going to need to become lovers like it's not enough for them to just be friends anymore but he hasn't quite realized that yet and so then like angst ensues we also get the conclusion to the suspense slot that has been running throughout the trilogy which i thought that was wrapped up really nicely and i just thought this was one of my favorite childhood friends to love her stories i've read in a really long time so this one really worked for me on like an angsty romance level which is not always my vibe but this one really worked for me and then highland wolf is number four this is the lindsay sands highlander book that is going to come out in january of 2022 you guys know that i am absolute trash for that series they are the perfect combination of kind of goofy campiness like light-hearted tone with some decently sexy times and there's always a mystery plot engine but it is set in the medieval highland lox of scotland and uh they are not historically accurate and i don't care because well in general you guys know how i feel about that but anyway they're just they're so fun and this i feel like the series had gotten a little bit samey there for a while but i feel like she's been breathing some new energy back into it in the last few books and this one i felt that way about as well also interestingly this hero was a child in the first book so we met him a long long time ago but now he's a man and uh he has been in hiding because his parents were murdered and they didn't know who did that so his and uncle like hid him and had him trained and raised without telling anybody that he was still alive so that they you know basically so that he would survive into adulthood but now he is coming back into his birthright and uh he is saving the last he has betrothed to from an evil uncle who's trying to marry her off to someone and road trip murderous hijinks and sue from there this was super fun if you like this series you will like this book i think i know i did i really enjoyed this it just it hit the spot for me for the mood that i'm in when i reach for a lindsay sands historical then number three and the highest of the four stars bordering on a four and a half but just not quite i think i wonder if i hadn't been doing a side changeling reread if i would have given this a four and a half just because like i've been reading so many of them like i remember that there are better ones than this in the series so i don't know but anyway this one is super strong there's not very many not good ones in the side changeling series but this is another really good one i think and this is between pile rao and mercant dude what's his name pantomercant mercant mercant i'm never sure so this had a couple of pacing issues which is why like that's basically why i didn't give it the full four and a half but in terms of the trope and the dynamic i'm just gonna tell you that this is basically a version of the plot that we got in heart of obsidian in book 12. if you know me you know that that is my favorite book of the series that is one of my all-time favorite books like a top 10 kind of book for me so i loved seeing that dynamic play out again from nalini singh i think this was a really effective version of it i really liked some of the macro plot stuff that we got in this with the anchors and kind of what's been going on with them it was just really good it was a really good book and uh yeah i think in general if i had to like pick a favorite romance reading experience of the year it has been rereading the side changeling series for the podcast that i've been doing i got to interview nalini singh which was like book nerd bucket list kind of item so that was really exciting and just overall i absolutely love this book definitely the strongest of my four stars and just god bless nalini singh and the side changeling series it is such a wonderful series and i just wish everybody would at least give it a try because they're just so well written so great i love them and then number two we get my one four and a half star pick and that is the love con by cyricia glass now i'm gonna tell you this may be tainted or like skewed upward because i read this when i needed this book i was about to have surgery and i was just like there's a lot of things going on and i was an anxious mess and this was just so delightful and wholesome my pitch for this is if you liked spoiler alert from olivia dade in 2020 you should absolutely give the love con a try because this i think is actually better i like this better it has a less issues book tone to it but it has a lot of the same thematic content and plot beats to it basically our heroine is a gamer who is on a reality show that is like for cosplay and she makes it to the final and she lies and says that her best friend is her boyfriend so that it will like strengthen her storyline basically but little does she know her best friend who is this hot guy who's like described basically like looking like thor that he's like a look-alike he's this hot fellow costumer who has been in love with her most of their life he tried to make a move in the past and really bungled it so he is like ha ha this is my chance to move again so i just thought that this was so wholesome i really liked each of these individual characters i really liked them together i really bought them together i liked the kind of complicated family dynamics because basically her parents had like quasi-adopted him so they have an interesting kind of like road to tread there she i think had some interesting things with her parents in terms of them not believing in her and having some like insecurity issues there she is plus size and i thought all of the sort of like fat phobia stuff was well handled at least in my opinion as a fat woman there's also some discussions about expectations for black women because she is black yeah i just i really like this i liked what this was doing intellectually i liked what this was doing entertainment wise i liked what this was doing emotionally for me i thought that this was really really good and under hyped this year for sure what was not over hyped is my number one pick um i know because i was part of building the hype train for this one i've read on a whim kind of this as an art before it came out and that is the love hypothesis from ali hazelwood this has been the big breakout hit of the year originally i was i would have said like oh i've never really heard anybody who read this who didn't like it because it's been so popular we're now getting more people reading it who may not have picked it up otherwise and many people not enjoying it my friend jess has like an amazing not enjoying it video that i'll try to remember to link but i love this this is like my catnip i originally gave this four and a half stars but then i found myself like i've already reread the back half of this like three times this year and i think what does it for me it has all of the mara trope candy like this is my kind of book it is fake dating it is characters who are stem they're nerds it's got grump sunshine it has they're both staying in the same hotel room trope and i think what really tips this over and this doesn't work for everyone now that i'm seeing more like less positive reviews because at first it was like everybody was just gushing about this but now there's more like mixed reviews i personally love the way that the kind of sexual harassment piece of the external conflict works out like to me it was so satisfying the way that that shook out i don't think everybody has found that as satisfying as i personally did but also content warning for sexual harassment in a workplace but i really like the way that that shook out and for me the sex scene i mean listen i it reminded me a lot of fanfic sex scenes and that i was not mad about that unquestionably my favorite romance of 2021 and kelly hazelwood followed me on tik tok so i feel like i've kind of made it but anyway my only five star romance of the year and definitely number one unquestionably so i think that does it for my favorite romances of 2021 definitely let me know what you thought of any of the books that i talked about on the list let me know what your favorite romances of 2021 were do you have kind of year like me that was a little bit more mixed not as many just standouts goodyear bad year let me know that in the comments below and yeah i think that that will do it for this video so if you enjoyed it please like subscribe follow me on the social medias if you are so inclined i have all that information listed in the description box below and i think that that will do it i hope you're having an absolutely lovely day today and i will just talk to you soon bye you

Channel: bookslikewhoa

Views: 3,543

Keywords: books, reading, booktube, literature

Id: cvprAmhzCsw

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021